


Catalyst

by perryvic



Category: Earth 2 (TV 1994)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perryvic/pseuds/perryvic





	Catalyst

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LillyRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillyRose/gifts).



Their worried expressions faded from her consciousness but the fear remained as the cold of cryo tube over took her failing body and sealed her in a living stasis on the cusp of death. Devon was vaguely aware that she must be dreaming though the sensation just felt like she was drowning in dark and cold. There was a pressure around her, a presence of some type something immense, something hostile that she could sense rather than see or comprehend. Something moving in the darkness, that could obliterate her, of that she was instinctively certain and a level of primal fear gripped in her dark isolation.

In the dream she was looking around wildly, trying to seek the source of this creeping horror. It was akin to the growing panic and anxiety as if oxygen had been cut off, and air was swiftly running out only she had no trouble breathing. The darkness was claustrophobic, confining somehow and she could not escape the thought that she was slowly and inexorable being walled in. Devon shouted out her anxiety to the emptiness;   she had dreamed in cryo sleep before and it wasn’t like this. At its worse it had been jumbled half coherent images, and she knew that part of the preparation cocktail of drugs was something to induce pleasant states of mind.

 Something was terribly wrong, perhaps it was something like had happened to Alonzo, and the cryo pod had malfunctioned and she was half-frozen, half in stasis with her life trickling away and no way to tell anyone she was in mortal danger. Devon couldn’t explain why it felt she was in mortal peril but the awareness of that icy feeling curdled in the pit of her stomach pushing her to try and find a way to wake, or to communicate her problem She tried to dream herself to the dreamscape, concentrating but all she could see was a glimmer of brightness in the distance and it seemed unreachable. Images coalesced around her and it was as if she was isolated in some form of void on a small floating island. Something had gone wrong, it had to have done. She rationalized the images as her subconscious reacting to knowledge that her life was under extreme threat even while in stasis. The thought of the others driving off, leaving her and her being alone in the dark as it consumed her little by little broke through her normal calm and she started shouting into the darkness.

 “Danziger! Yale! Julia?”

Someone had to hear her, she couldn’t die like this. Uly, Uly or Alonzo might hear her with their connection to the dreamplane.

“ULY! ALONZO…Anyone! Can you hear me?”

 Silence.

 

* * *

 

“All I’m saying is that we are packed up for a reason,” Morgan was holding forth in that annoying slightly patronising tone he used when he thought everyone else was too stupid to see sense. John was pretty sure one day he would just punch him for it. “Julia has said she can’t do anything for Devon without better equipment. And, we all know where that better equipment is don’t we?”  
  
Danziger looked at the loaded vehicles. “We’re not going anywhere,” he said instantly as a reflex. Heading off across the continent leaving Devon cryo-locked in a box was not an option to him, even if he didn’t particularly want to examine the reasons why he felt that way in great detail. No, it was because he knew and respected her drive. They all wanted to get to New Pacifica but he had no illusions that it was Devon’s focus that had motivated them on the days where hunger, tiredness and obstacles seemed to bedevil every step of the way.  
  
Baines put down the water container, squinting at him in the harsh sunlight. “We can’t stay here forever. Much as I hate to agree with Morgan…”  
  
Danziger ignored Morgan’s mildly offended expression. “We need to at least explore possibilities,” he said firmly, wondering when the hell he had become the de facto leader all of a sudden. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling – one thing to be elected, but quite another to get it by default.  
  
“Dad!” True came pelting around the corner of the lab building. “Dad! I can’t find Uly!”  
  
“Whoa True-girl, he’s probably inside with his mom,” Danziger said bracing himself for the sudden impact of his daughter as she ran into him for a hug. She was really rattled and that made him pay attention., and  
  
“He’s not! I already checked there, and in the transrover!” There was something to her panic and a certain look in her eye that made him pause. It wasn’t just a suspicion she had that Uly was missing, it was a certainty. She knew something.  
  
“True, do you know where he’s gone?” he asked dropping to a crouch to meet her eyes. There it was, the tell-tale look away. “True, you’ve got to tell me what happened.”

She looked guilty. “We heard them talking.” She gestured at Bess and Morgan who looked a little bit guilty. “..’Bout how we can’t stay and we would have to leave Devon behind, and then Uly said he wasn’t going to let that happen and if Julia couldn’t fix what had happened, maybe the Terrians would heal her like they did him or know what to do.”  
  
And then he’d taken off. Sure, that was the logical thing to do. “Dammit.  Where’s my gear?”  
  
“Danziger!” Yale headed towards him looking troubled. “It’s..”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Uly’s gone off to the Terrians looking for a cure.” John  turned on his gear to their general comms channel. “Lonz, do you read me?”  
  
“I read you. Still scouting up the trail to the north, nothing much to report yet,” Alonzo’s voice sounded.  
  
“You’ve got another priority. Uly’s taken off looking for Terrian’s to help cure Devon.” He said. “We’re going to scour the camp, but I think he’s taken his usual wheels.”  
  
“Shit, okay. I’m on it. I’ll check in when I get something,” Alonzo said and John found himself agreeing.  
  
“Update in a couple of hours  anyway. Over and out.” He turned to the mustering group. “Okay everyone, lets go over this place with a fine tooth comb. I want every corner and crate searched, just in case.”  
Practical he could do, practical he was more than good at and if that was the only thing he could do at the moment, he would do that as much as he could.

* * *

Alonzo stopped the ATV on a rise, trying to get a good view of the surrounding area. It was tricky landscape, dips and rills.  He knew enough now to spot the sort of area that Terrian’s seemed to prefer and could usually reason out what Uly could do by transplanted instinct. He caught a glimpse of metal through his bino’s successfully locating the ATV Uly had used but even as he got out ready to head over, he felt the mild vibration beneath his feet that had him instinctively standing back. Just in the nick of time as a Terrian rose up in front of him, and then another behind him, and another and another, surrounding him with their alien presence that had become more and more familiar to him. The crackling energy of the dreamplane swirled around him, almost palpable in the cool air as one of them trilled a summons for him to dream with them which was more a demand than a request. He let himself slide into the Terrian dreamscape, that moment of free-fall at once exhilarating and terrifying as the landscape around him was overlaid with brightness and clearer communication.

 _“Starstrider”._ He was never sure how the meaning arrived in his mind from the sounds that the Terrians made but they had become clearer and more intelligible the longer he stayed on this planet.  
  
“I am looking for Uly, can you help me?” he asked. The Terrian’s were not ones for pleasantries, or small talk on the whole.  
  
_“The Joined one is with us. He is upset.”_ There were ripples and echoes of other meaning behind the words. Alonzo could faintly hear echoes of Chosen one, One-Most-Hoped-For, World-Bridge and alarmingly Gifted Sacrifice under the description of Uly. But he knew who they meant.

“His mother is unwell, dying. He wants to save her. “

 _“The People are aware of this. She will pass and will be renewed by our Mother.”_ The Terrian tilted its head at him. _“But he refuses this. We do not understand.”_

“It is not the same for us,” Alonzo tried to explain. He had tried so many times to impart this key difference to the Terrians.  They found the concept completely alien, as they passed into the Earth at MoonCross and from what he understood, were renewed, returned to the Mother or reborn. Individuals were not lost, they were temporarily dormant at best. Death was not something they feared – they had feared Gaal more for his propensity for preventing bones returning to the ground. That gave him an angle to try in his explanation. “When we pass, we do not return like you do. It would be to him as if… she will be barred from the going into the earth but end anyway.”

There was a wash of confusion, horror and almost overwhelming pity for them all. _“We did not know. The violence and struggle of your existence becomes more understandable now.”_

“Can you help us? Help Devon?” Alonzo asked eagerly, feeling he had made a form of a breakthrough. “Can you tell me at least what is wrong with her?”

 _“The Mother rejects her,”_ the Terrians replied and Alonzo felt his heart drop. It was as Elizabeth had said before she died that they could not live here, that all of them were dying. But Julia had seen no sign of any bacteria, virus or pathogen in Devon’s blood samples..

  
“How? Why is this happening? Is it happening to all of us?” He asked urgently. “What can we do?”  
  
_“This is the will of the Mother. Become of the Mother.”_ The Terrians said this as if it was self evident. Ripples and whispers of meaning flickered underneath those words and Alonzo strained to catch them latching onto ‘become bonded to the Mother’.  
  
“But how?” he asked, seized by the fear this could happen to Julia too. “How do we make Devon bonded to the Mother? Any of us?”  
  
_“You already are bonded,”_ they replied trilling in a fluid resonance in his mind. _“You are here. The Mother has used your service and you are accepted.”_  
  
Again, it was if it should be obvious but Alonzo was struggling to grasp the meaning and implications even as another shorter figure rose up from the blinding white sand of the dreamplane. “Uly!”  
  
“You have to help me Alonzo, “ Uly  practically begged him. “They don’t understand.”  
  
“Uly, they are talking about helping your mother by bonding her to the planet,” Alonzo said. “But only you are … you know.”

“I know, but they are talking about here, this place,” Uly said falling into the strangely adult cadence he sometimes adopted when he talked with the Terrians. He was looking around. “It is here. This is what is rejecting them. The dream plane. Those who cannot find their harmony with this place in time are marked and rejected by the Mother.”  
  
It made a strange sort of sense. Julia hadn’t been able to find a virus, bacteria or organism responsible for Devon’s condition.  Alonzo hesitated. “What can we do? I mean why is it rejecting her?”

“Mom was dragged deep into the plane by a future me. The Terrian’s say it was that which started the process,” Uly answered looking distressed that he was the source of this disaster, even if it was different him. “But we can connect her. I know we can.”  
  
The Terrians trilled their haunting sounds. _“We cannot cross the void. But you… Starstrider, that is where you have existed.”  
  
_ And this time Alonzo heard the other rippling meanings of his Terrian given name. _Void walker,  Demonbane_ , and _Dream-weaver._ Not everything was understandable, but Alonzo knew he reacted sometimes with his instincts rather than his mind,  and he still remembered Devon holding the capsule for him and Julia. He didn’t forget that.

“ Then tell me what I can do.”

And Uly’s smile was as blinding as the white dreaming sands around them both.

 

* * *

Julia kept trying scan after scan, but it wasn’t making any sense. When Alonzo had come back without Uly but with a wild story about how they had a plan to save Devon it had strained her acceptance of the phenomena  of the dreamplane to the limit. Communication, yes, that was logical enough and Alonzo had confided in her that he had had some powerful and intense experiences that had changed him, but never healing or an illness due to the dream plane. Uly’s miraculous recovery she could document, even if that had lead her into near disaster. It had physiological changes she could track and recognize as well a Terrian DNA but a pure metaphysical cure? It ruffled her medical training and  she found herself arguing with Alonzo with more force than perhaps she should. Part of her knew it was about the fact she hadn’t been able to find a cure, which she took personally – it was hard to do otherwise when you were the only doctor in a small group. The other part of her was worried that Alonzo was agreeing to do something that he had no idea what effect it would have on him, or if it would make things better or worse for Devon.

“Devon was going into multiple organ failure. I’m not sure how anything will bring her back from that,” Julia said in a low mutter as she examined Devon’s readings again. “The medical facilities in New Pacifica  might stand a chance if we get them operational but it would require a full body dialysis to purge whatever this is from her system.”  
  
The fact she couldn’t find anything specific to purge was neither here nor there.  
  
Danziger was pacing  restlessly. “Lonz, you sure they said this would cure her?” he asked again,  turning his attention back to the pilot.  
  
“They said it had a chance if I can pull it off. We can pull it off.” Alonzo sat down, looking directly at the cryo capsule with Devon in it. She could almost see the moment when he decided he would do it come what may. “They said I need to concentrate on weaving a connection…bridging a gap between her energy and the planets energy field.”  
  
“Ad you just…know how to do with this. Danziger you can’t seriously be thinking of letting him do this,” Julia said amazed that the usual immensely practical man wasn’t shooting down the idea. Logic told them to wait to New Pacifica and better equipment and facilities.  
  
“If the dreamplane is rejecting her it is possible that her REM sleep is compromised,” Yale suggested. “A complete cessation in REM sleep can…”  
  
“Yes, yes cause death,” Julia said acknowledging the point. “Neurological symptoms and…” She hesitated. There was a possibility Devon’s symptoms could be being caused by a complete inability to dream if something was completely suppressing the brains ability to do so.

“So it is possible that this is caused by.” Danziger gestured to Alonzo who looked up from his own contemplation. “A dream thing?”  
  
“Human’s don’t react well to a lack of REM sleep, “ Julia  had to admit slowly. “But I have no evidence that is even the problem. “ She did not want Alonzo risking himself for nothing, but it was  the biggest open secret out there that Danziger and Devon were dancing around a relationship. It sometimes seemed to the group the only two who didn’t see that they were sucked into each others orbits with an inexorability that could lead to only one out come. But she gave him credit, Danziger was not just reacting, he was trying to use reason.

“Can you get Uly back from the Terrians?” John fixed his attention on Alonzo.

Alonzo shook his head slowly not breaking his gaze. “He’s holding himself hostage to force us to stay. The Terrians will do as he says.”

“Dammit.” John paced again. “ Medicine versus dreams. Seems like it’s no contest but...” He looked at Alonzo, and it was obvious to Julia at least he was trying to find a reason, a rationale to try this crazy approach.

Julia shook her head. She loved Alonzo, but she had to use scientific thought and logic. That was who she was, who she had been trained to be. “John, it might be a factor but I’m not sure it could hope to cure her completely.”  
  
His expression looked grim as he wrestled with the decision and Alonzo cut in. “Look, from what they were saying, this backs up what Elizabeth said before she dies. We need to work out how to deal with this before it affects all of us. Why not here where we have a cryo-pod?”

“You’re saying we could all get sick?” Morgan said suddenly seeming to pay attention from where he was loitering at the door. He gestured to Alonzo peremptorily. “Shoot him up Julia. He wants to do it. It’s not like we can go anywhere without Uly, and what’s the worst that could happen?”  
  
Anything. Alonzo could die, Devon could die. Julia forced herself to be professional. “I’m not sure, that’s the point.”  
  
“Lonz, you think you can do this?” John asked directly and Julia knew at that point she was going to lose this one. John liked the practical but since the possession by the ancient Terrian, he had a greater respect for Alonzo’s dreams, the power  and active part of them not just the communication. Alonzo had  tried to describe what had happened, and the more… esoteric side of the encounter. All she knew was that he had been showing physical signs from the encounter.

“I can try it,” Alonzo said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Okay. We’ll try it. Julia, if you can monitor him.” Danziger said settling the matter. “Alonzo, just..try your best.”

“Got it.” Alonzo nodded moving towards her. “It might take some time. “  
  
“We’ll set camp,” John agreed, moving towards the door. “Tell the others we might be here a few days. Come on Morgan.”

  
Julia watched as the bureaucrat followed John out of the laboratory and shook her head even as Alonzo met her gaze with dark eyes.

  
"You drive me crazy you know that?" she said in a low voice readying the sedi-derm. "I didn't spend all this time fixing you up just to see you fling yourself into something that could fry your brains for all we know."  
  
"Julia." 

  
How did he manage to say just a single word and all her resolve to be angry at him just started to melt away?  
  
"Julia, please look at me," Alonzo asked her, catching her hand, fingers touching her pulse point in a way that made her shiver. She looked up slowly and caught him looking serious and intense. "You know I can't leave anyone behind. Not if there is a chance."  
  
She wasn't sure whether to be angry or... what to feel at that reminder. "I know, you don't have to remind me of that." It came out terse and abrupt and she wanted to turn away but Alonzo held her gaze.  
  
"No, Julia, I know. It wasn't meant to be a... Look, when I see Devon there, I see this happening to you, do you understand? When the Terrians tell you something, it's not just words, it is feelings and they have absolutely certainty this will happen to all of us. What if we are in the middle of nowhere and this happens to you? What if it happens now and I have to put you in a cryo capsule and leave you behind?" His eyes were dark and filled with a desperation she had not encountered in any relationship before and she found it almost too overwhelming to deal with. "I can't do that."

“I…” Julia felt her eyes burn with rising emotion and covered it by nodding. “I understand Alonzo. I just want you to be safe.”  
  
“I know. I don’t know what it will involve, just that it would take time and would not be easy. “ Alonzo replied lying down on a makeshift cot they had dragged over beside Devon’s cryo capsule.

“We’ll be watching you both for changes,” Julia said and allowed herself a moment of unprofessionalism as she leaned in for a brief sweet kiss before she gave him the sedi-derm that would ease his transition to the dream plane.

* * *

Her world was fracturing. Devon could see it disintegrating before her eyes.  The floating island in the cold void of whatever limbo between consciousness and dreaming she was trapped in was literally crumbling away. She stood at the edge of it, in morbid fascination as metaphysical rock and sand cracked off the ragged edge and slid into the void. She was aware of the symbolism because it seemed with every passing moment she couldn’t remember something, or parts of her were disappearing with it eroding away.  Her floating island was diminishing and she knew somehow that once it all disappeared, then she would die, much as the other scientists had done even as their bodies were preserved in the cryo capsule.  All that would be left in the pod was an empty shell of a body, a husk with its center eaten away waiting to crumble into death.

Devon shivered. She hated this. All her life she was used to taking action in a crisis, for being able to react, plan and fight her own battles. When Uly became ill, when he was just a baby, she didn’t just accept the terminal prognosis, she had found a way to fight for his life – even if it had meant turning the current political and sociological  structures on their head to do so. The Adair’s were fighters her father had always told her but how could she fight an emptiness that literally stole away everything she was?  
  
“Mom?”

It was something faint, something barely audible but it had her scanning the darkness frantically in hope.

 “Uly?! ULY!” she yelled back, and the bright white spot in the distance seemed to be growing brighter, a pre-dawn glow on the horizon.  
  
“Mom! We’re coming!” She definitely heard that and the light was in front of her coalescing into the Terrian dreamplane, but still a significant distance from her floating fragment. She could see Uly, his shape instantly recognizable to her, standing on his edge of the pure white sands, but the abyss between them remained as impenetrable as before.

“Devon? Can you hear me?” That was Alonzo, and she went as close to the edge as possible.

“I’m here Alonzo! The place is falling apart!” she called out urgently. “I need you to help me!”

But even she couldn’t see how they could.

“Don’t worry we’ll work it out, just hold on,” Alonzo called back.

It wasn’t like she could do anything else except wait patiently.

* * *

Uly wasn’t sure how he knew things sometimes, but this time he knew with that weird feeling that made it a certainty that this was as close as they were going to get the Terrian Dreamplane to his mom. It had literally pushed her outside of itself and the void was the Mother crushing her much as he tried to forget or put bad dreams or thoughts out of his mind.

“I can’t get us any closer Alonzo,” he said, unable to keep his voice steady. He thought he would be able to connect the dreamplane here with his mom’s own self that was bonded with the other Earth.  He thought he understood – the Terrains had been able to heal him and bond him easily to the Mother because Syndrome kids hadn’t bonded to any world… there was an emptiness inside of them that drained their strength. A least that was what he believed, but his idea of meshing the two planes together wasn’t going to work and now he didn’t know what they were going to do.  
  
“Yeah, it’s a pretty nasty barrier,” Alonzo said looking at the hostile void. “ Like space.” He seemed to be thinking. “Explain to me again what the Terrians said we had to do?””  
  
“Link this place with that place,” Uly said gesturing to his Mom’s island. “Roots and things. If we make a strong enough link, they will form a sym…symbiotic relationship like the Terrians and mom will be okay.”  
  
“Can you do that?” Alonzo asked seriously. Uly appreciated the fact that the pilot took him seriously and didn’t dismiss him as a kid. They talked about the dreamplane sometimes, away from the others both aware that there were things about it that had to be experienced not described.  
  
Uly considered and shook his head. “They made me more this side than that in the dreamplane…” he said looking at the white sands. He raised his hands and white tendrils rose up from the ground responding to  his will. “I can make roots here but that doesn’t do any good!”

“So let’s see, you can make roots here, and Devon has roots over there so basically it needs to be joined in the middle?”  the pilot asked him.

“Yeah!” Uly agreed, pleased he had managed to communicate the  problem.

“Then I guess that’s where I come in,” Alonzo said looking over the huge gap with an appraising look. He experimentally threw a rock with force and it behaved as if he was throwing it in a low gravity area before gradually losing momentum and sinking. “Good enough.  Right… Uly I want you to pull up roots , vines from here, nice and strong and long okay?”

He nodded vigorously and started to do that, visualizing them easily, even as Alonzo was calling out to his mom, “Devon, you need to think about roots, your own roots, vines and be ready okay?”

He heard the faint, “Okay!” from her and redoubled his efforts.  
  
Alonzo grasped the white vines and roots, twisting them into a vague rope and then wound one end around his waist. “Have you got some ready Devon?” he shouted.  
  
“Yes! I’m ready!”

Alonzo nodded. “Okay, you put your energy into here Uly, I’m relying on you.”

Uly agreed vigorously, and looked at him trying to figure out exactly what the pilot was doing as the older man turned and walked away from the edge, teasing out the rope so it wasn’t tangled.

“What’re you doing Alonzo?” he asked as the man line himself up carefully.

The older man grinned at him and said, “Fly,” even as he sprinted towards the void and flung himself out into the nothingness.

* * *

Decisions in the dreamplane were strange things as emotions and feelings had much more power here than back in the real world. The moment Alonzo thought that he could jump and reach Devon if she threw something out for him to catch hold of and felt certain he could do it, was the moment he had to do it. That certainty would fade as his conscious mind would start challenging him on the impossibility of the action and he would be unable to do it. In this place thoughts and feelings were the reality and could be the miracle or the downfall of any plan. He had to draw all the self confidence that had allowed him to fly great monstrous spaceships, that put hundreds of thousands of people’s lives over the decades in his hands and fling himself across that void, trusting in Uly’s tether.

Instantly, the pitiless cold, and the pressure of something there started to erode his confidence but he kept his eyes focused on his goal. Devon…on her floating island, adrift and eroding, her time running out. “Throw me the roots Devon, imagine them long and … throw them!” he yelled urgently as his momentum carried him drifting forward like he was in space.

“What the hell are you doing!?” Devon shouted back at him as she was fumbling with the roots.

“No time, just throw!” He hoped not giving her time to over analyse would help. It seemed to work, she flung the crudely fashioned line out towards him and it floated in his direction. Instinctively he adjusted his angle and trajectory to intersect with it as he felt his own momentum slow and he start to drop. Fear gripped him but he remained calm and focused and grabbed the other line, suspended in the void between the roots from the Terrian dreamplane and those from Devon. Devon’s roots wound around his right arm and hand as if it were her own hand reaching for rescue and clutching at him desperately.

Then swift as a snake the dreamplane roots that were tethered around him lunged forward, penetrating through him, even as Devon’s repeated the action  and he had a moment of blinding disorientation as everything flared white and he realized he was stuck there, enmeshed in the two energies that were trying to find a mutual compatibility using him as a catalyst. More to the point, he was stuck there apparently now tangled in Devon’s thoughts and memories.  
  
“Alonzo?” Devon turned around, and they were back on the bridge of the colony ship only this time he could see himself sitting in the pilots chair, see O’Neill talking to another version of Devon. “What’s…what’s happening?”

He looked down at himself, seeing the energies pushing through his own presence with a sense of alarm. Things had to be connected, calculations made, everything twined together and that attention was dragging him to a different level of consciousness.

“I, I am trying to link you to the Terrian dreamplane,” he said trying to sound more confident about the process. “Devon you need to keep remembering, keep feeding your memories through me. All of them. The more you can the more links I can make.”

She looked worried, understandably so. “Is Uly there?”

“He is anchoring the other side.” He could feel Uly there on the Terrian dreamplane, his focus being split into strands. The strain was proving too much for him to do that and remain talking to Devon. “Devon I need to …I think this is going to take everything I’ve got.” He was used to doing complex calculations in his head, had trained and been one of the best at astrogation, but that seemed like child’s play compared to the demands this was starting to put on him.  
  
“Alonzo…” Now she sounded worried. “All I have to do is remember?”

“As clearly and truthfully as you can,” he said urgently, knowing it was important but not sure why. “Please Devon. You’ll lose yourself if you don’t.” The pressure was building in his head. He couldn’t dual focus any more. He had no choice but to let his attention fold inwards hoping that Devon could do enough to save her own life and her mind.

* * *

True shifted awkwardly from where she was watching Alonzo for Julia. Her Dad had told the doctor she wouldn’t be any good in an emergency if she didn’t get rest, especially after she seemed to want to stay continuously by his side when Alonzo’s temperature had started to rise, along with some readings or something in Devon that had gone a bit weird.  She was meant to be monitoring Alonzo’s temperature (she’d managed not to roll her eyes at Julia when she gave her instructions on how to use the sensor because she knew that she was worried. Honestly, she’d been using them before she had to attend compulsory-Ed classes on her first Station.)

At first it felt good and like she was really doing something important, because Alonzo looked pretty sick. Worse than he did when he had his broken leg.  She’d broken her wrist once falling from a chute rung – which had grease on it, not because she wasn’t paying attention, even if Dad had shouted at her about that which was unfair. Waiting for the bone-heal vaccine to work had been the worst night of her life, because dad hadn’t been able to afford the booster that accelerated the process and their indentured terms didn’t cover it on medical. She was pretty sure she would have _died_ if she’d had to wait much longer. So what was happening had to be pretty bad, because Alonzo had waited ages to get his leg mended and had been pretty tough about it.

But now, a few hours in, she was…well… bored. If Uly had been there, well they could have made an adventure of it. In a serious way of course, because they took things seriously otherwise they had to sit through lots of lectures from Yale, and Dad, and Julia, and Devon. They were pretty good together, at exploring stuff, and things and sitting and watching Alonzo lie there was pretty dull.

She sighed heavily and fidgeted, wishing her Dad hadn’t gone out looking for Uly again, because he was her dad, not his, but then that was dad for you. She almost wished that something did happen, but then felt bad about that as well because Alonzo was nice. She looked over at him - he looked like he had fever, and was sick. Her dad had one once, and she had stayed up and put cold compresses on his head because he hadn’t wanted to lose a bonus for perfect attendance on a contract to something as pathetic as a virus brought through by some asteroid hopper. It had worked too. Maybe she should do that for Alonzo. It wouldn’t hurt or anything.

Decided she got up and found a bit of a dressing and put some water on it. Julia probably had a function on her dia-glove that helped to cool ill people down but she would improvise. Carefully she put it on his forehead and accidentally brushed her finger against his skin.

It was like the moment of disorientation when you were sucked into gear VR and there she was in the familiar shapes and tunnels of one of the stations. An older station to her practiced eye.

“True?” Devon’s voice sounded behind her and she nearly shrieked as she whirled around.

“Devon!” She hugged her spontaneously, so pleased to see her apparently awake.

“What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “I don’t even know where here is. I was putting a cold compress on Alonzo’s head. He’s not well, Julia said he’s been in the dreamscape longer than he ever has before. Where are we?”  
Devon looked concerned at that news. “You’re in one of my memories, True. It was a long time ago.”  
  
True looked around taking in details. “Yeah, that model of release catch was discontinued when I was really small,” she said importantly.

“You should go,” Devon encouraged her.

“I don’t know how. Besides, maybe I can help?” True said, definitely not wanting to leave something so interesting. “Where is Alonzo anyway?”  
  
“He drifts in and out, usually when the memory is done.” Devon was looking at a young dark haired girl, about her own age running giggling with a boy down the service corridor.   True was just going to ask who it was when she heard the boy shout.

 _“Devon! Slow up!”  
“Come on Robbie, I’m telling you it’s worth it!” the girl replied_.

True had to acknowledge that young Devon looked okay.  Sorta weird seeing her that young but she looked like a rich kid. She knew all about rich kids.

_“I’ll get in trouble!” Robbie protested._

_“No we won’t,” Devon said half way up a ladder._

_“You mean *you* won’t,” Robbie said folding his arms and refusing to go past a certain point.  
_  
True privately thought him a bit of a wuss. “What a scaredy-cat.” She’d always liked that saying.

“He wasn’t, “ Devon said sounding a little sad, “But I didn’t know. Until now.”

_“Come on, “ young Devon urged. “We got away with it when we snuck into hydroponics!”_

_The expression on the boys face twisted to one of anger. “No! No WE didn’t,” he said with force. “How can you be so stupid and so clever at the same time Adair?”_

_She looked confused and a bit angry. “What do you mean?”_

_“You’re really don’t know?  You lost my dad his job. He’s security…was security and with your tricks and me being involved, you dad got him blamed for all of it,” Robbie hissed at her. “Your harmless little adventure prob’ly means we will end up dirtside in the mines. Spoilt little rich girl.”_

_Young Devon looked cut to the quick. “You wanted to go with me!”  
  
“No I didn’t, but if I say no to you what then? You get us chucked off the station!” Robbie had obviously been bottling up his anger. “I wish I’d never been your friend. I wish you’d stayed where you belonged and had a fancy tutor like all of the other Family kids. Compulsory –Ed isn’t for you. It’s just a GAME.”  
  
Young Devon  came down the ladder, looking pale, shocked and with tears rolling down her cheeks. “It’s … it’s not a game... I like class…” she whispered._

_“Yeah you like it. Don’t think we don’t know that you know it all. You’re just playing Adair. You’re probably chromo-tilted like all Family kids,” Robbie said yelling out his frustration. “But for me, Compulsory-Ed is going to be my way out of indentured Service.  You wouldn’t know about that.”  
_  
True shifted uncomfortably. It was a little close to how Uly and her argued. If it weren’t for the fact he’d been so ill she would have thought he’d had the perfect life.  
  
_“I do! Indentured service is a way of working off the debt of..”  
  
“Straight out of the text book. That’s not knowing.  “ He shook his head. “I can’t be your friend anymore Devon.”_ _  
She had gone silent, though there were still fresh tears but eventually she said. “Were you ever my friend Robbie?”  
There was a hesitant pause. “Once. That’s why I’m telling you this instead of pretending like everyone else does.”_

The images blurred a little then and True felt a bit unsure. She’d always had friends. Dad was good at making friends and though a lot of the time they could be annoying when she wanted to do like dad said and become the best mechanic, and buy out of  service she’s never had to sit there and wonder if everyone was using her. She took Devon’s hand and mumbled.  “Sorry,” though she wasn’t sure why she was saying it. Maybe because she had heard the other compulsory-Ed kids joke about buddying up to a rich kid as a meal ticket far too often  to realize it was probably very true. But she’d never thought about what it might feel like to be the person who never knew if a friend was real or not.

“It is the way of our society True,” Devon said. “That was the first time that I realized I wasn’t going to get normal friends, or that different rules applied to me. I didn’t want that… I was a little hellion in my teens.”  
  
“A hellion?” she asked trying to imagine Devon Adair, their leader who always seemed to know what to do as anything but calm, determined and decisive. “What’s that?”

Devon smiled a little. “Oh I got in a lot of trouble. My Father, he wasn’t the easiest of men. I only came to his attention when I was in trouble. In some ways True, you’re lucky. Your father does all he can to have you with him all the time.”  
  
She nodded at that. It was true, he did and it was weird to think of herself as lucky compared to one of the Adair Family. Billionaires. Citizens, Leaders.  “But you’re so …rich,” she blurted out.

“And look at us now? Is it doing me any good?” Devon replied with a sigh. “Didn’t do much good then either. Believe me, I was a delinquent.  At the time I just felt angry, and isolated. I had no friends while having a lot of so-called friends. They wanted to party, and I could get all the illegal alco-synth, or even black-market hydroponic hallucinogens. “

The fuzziness resolved itself as Devon spoke, flickering images of a teenager, drinking, smoking… True nearly gasped at that… smoking on a Space station was tantamount to burning money and a social taboo besides. But what she did notice was Devon was rarely smiling.

“I don’t understand how you could be unhappy. You’re a free Citizen, and lots of money.” True said pointedly. “Dad didn’t get a choice, we were born into Indentured Service after his Grandparents  secured a contract on Marspoint Station. They worked all their lives, so did Dad’s dad and he says he doesn’t want me to have to do that.”

“True…there are different pressures involved in being a member of a politically powerful Family.” Devon said wearily.  
  
“Will you show me?” she asked. “Please Devon! Please, I want to know more!”

“True, I…”

 The light brightened around them and she could see Alonzo translucent and picked out in light like he was some sort of ghost, though he looked pretty bad. “It’s helping, it’s making you remember Devon, so I can connect things… keep doing it…I…”

And he faded out again, even as True herself felt someone roughly shake her shoulder and herself startle awake.

“True what are you doing?!” Julia sounded angry. “I gave you a job , an _important_ job, and you fall asleep!”

“But Julia I was dreaming with them!” she protested. “Devon was showing me things from when she was young…and the Alonzo was there and said I helped! Because it made it easier for him to connect things.”

There, let them tell her off now.

“You spoke to them? How?” Julia asked urgently. “What did you do?”

“Alonzo looked hot, so I was going to put a cool cloth on his head, “ She explained. “And I think I touched him and… I was there.”

“Like the Elder does with the Terrians, “ Julia murmured to herself. “Okay True, that’s good. I’ll talk to the others about it. If it helps, it helps.”

True nodded, and ran off. Maybe if she was lucky, she would get to have another chance to hear more about Devon.

* * *

Bess was a little bit unsure about this. But Julia had checked True’s story and said Devon’s lifesigns were measurably better as a result of the joined dreaming, and she had to admit she was no stranger to big dreams, even if the dreamplane was not something she really remembered experiencing. To be honest, she wasn’t’ sure how much she had in common with the other woman, and seeing her memories was sure to highlight how different they were.  She had struggled down in the mines on Earth, watching her family die at a good age for Earth, taken by pollutant based cancers, lung rot, pneumonia which could just be cured simply up on the Stations.  Oh, they were free, but they were free to die before they ever could stop working.  All of her friends dreamed of the same thing; getting a contract on a station, even securing indentured service away from Earth.

She went one step further. Bess knew she was shrewd, clever and a survivor, but she wanted to live, not survive. She had her beauty and a rock solid ability to negotiate and size up someone in moments and she wasn’t afraid to use it. Morgan had seemed like an easy target for escape route from the dead end of her existence on earth – and she had not been expecting to fall in love with him as part of the process.

A world away, literally, from Devon Adair and the Adair dynasty. Born into privilege and the only real problems she had had been having a child with the Syndrome.

Bess  reached for Alonzo’s hand, barely having a moment to register how hot it was before she was drawn in to the Dream.

* * *

This time it was Bess. Devon focused on the other woman trying to regain her composure. She had just relived a particularly harrowing argument with her father; somehow over the years, she had managed to avoid thinking about how vicious he could get with his criticism and condemnations. There was something to be said for distance.

“Hello Bess,” she said. “Julia sending in reinforcements?”. Her heart sank as the memory coalescing around them took on a familiar cast. Her father’s stateroom in the  Galaxy level luxury quarters on the Titan Station.

“She said your life-signs improved when True was in here,” Bess said looking around with clear interest. “What is it that happening - we weren’t sure about it exactly?”

She kept getting glimpses of Alonzo, doing whatever it was he was somehow doing, tangled in ever moving webs of energy, concentrating harder than she’d ever seen him flying the big transports. “Alonzo is acting as some sort of catalyst along with Uly to try and stop the planet rejecting me. It involves my memories.”

“And they just happen?” Bess looked around. “This is a Galaxy Level. Morgan was invited to a diplomatic function in one of these quarters before.” And there it was, jealousy in her voice.

Devon sighed. “You all really do have the idea that I had a perfect life don’t you? Despite everything we’ve gone through everyone still thinks that I grew up in privilege and that was somehow perfection.”

To Bess’s credit, she didn’t back down. “Didn’t you?” she asked. “You don’t know what it was like on Earth.”  
  
“You’re wrong.”

_Sixteen year old Devon was being escorted in by the Station Law enforcement into her father’s presence. He looked furious._

_“For… what is it now?” he snapped out and she had forgot how his blue eyes blazed like cold-fire when he was angry. He was an imposing, handsome man, but most people noticed the intense blue of his eyes. Media feeds always lingered on them._

_“First Councilman Adair, your daughter was found trying to stow away on a vessel bound for Earth, “ the SLEO reported and Devon stood, folded arms in defiance._

_“Thank you Officer, you are dismissed.”_

Bess man a faint noise beside her. “And you weren’t tossed into jail.

“No, my Father had a …long arm.” Devon admitted, aware this wasn’t giving the impression she wanted.

“Not sure why you would have wanted to go to Earth,” Bess said. “Virtually everyone there was trying their level best to get away from the place.”

“My mother was there.” She’d played up for attention from her father, but when that got nowhere, she then tried to make a nuisance of herself so her Father would send her away to be with her mother. They worked in separate areas of space. Her father was more political but her mother was overseeing the construction of the next generation LaGrange Point Space Station. That was where she wanted to be.

_Her father was in full rant at her 16 year old self. “…and I’ve had enough of this ridiculous behavior. I warned you last time you pulled a stunt like this that I would ship you out, and I will.”  
A faint smile flickered on the younger Devon’s expression and Devon shook her head at her younger selves naivete. _

_“Oh, you think I’m sending you to your mother? Why would I do that when that would be a reward hmm?” Her father said. “No, you want to go to Earth, you will be going to Earth dirtside. You will serve an internship in one of our processing plants. No allowance. No Yale. No Adair name. You’re on your own. Good luck abusing your privilege there young lady.”_

_“You think that’s a punishment?!” teenage Devon looked livid. “It can’t be worse than being your indentured prodigy. Don’t think I don’t know that you uploaded, and patented my alteration to safety handles in the M series as one of your own.”_

_“You are my daughter!”  He yelled back. “Our Family’s success is communal.”  
“Sure it is! Mother and I have the brains and you just sit around pretending you did the work.”_

 “Was that true?” Bess asked as the memory argument continued. “Did he steal idea from you as a 16 year old?”

“Yes, “Devon had already worked through that first horrified recollection of realizing her own father had been hacking her files. “You don’t know me as anything else than the mother of Uly, organizing a colony, but I was good at the family business. My Mother was a genius at designing and I idolized her.”  
And she had won awards and accolades for her designs, youngest ever, youngest in a century and her mother had been so proud. But it hadn’t saved her in the end.

Bess seemed to be reappraising her. “I see, I just thought...”

“That I lived off of the Family fortune? Once I stopped trying to go to Compulsory –Ed classes, my father took on Yale as a personal tutor and…well my learning rate was accelerated.” Devon remembered the classes as being easy, and Yale gently chastising her for doodling designs, until he realized he could engage her interest by telling her she needed to know information to do the best designs.

The scene was changing. The bright luxury was replaced with Spartan accommodation.

“Oh, so you experienced the horrors of working Earthside,” Bess sounded like she knew the way this was going to turn out.

Devon smiled. “Yes, I did.”

“Of course you never wanted to go back.” Bess commented as if it was forgone.

She shook her head. “Quite the opposite.”

_Young Devon entered her quarters grinning from ear to ear. She looked dirty, grimy, her hair had lost some of its conditioned shine, but the smile made her stunning. Not only that but she wasn’t alone._

_“Told you I would fix it!” she was saying teasingly to the dark haired young man who caught her around the waist._

_“Course you did Dev,” he said grinning back at her. “Despite what old Gregor said. Misery guts. You  deserve this.” He proffered a small apple, and Devon’s eyes widened as if she was being offered the crown jewels of a long extinct monarchy._

_“And apple?  A fresh apple? Rico, you can’t have wasted your bonus allocation on me.” Devon said drawing close to the young man.  
_  
She had forgotten how handsome he was, how warm and vibrant and full of life.  
_  
“It’s not a waste when it’s for you is it?” he murmured nuzzling at her neck.  
  
“We’ll share it,” she said decisively and giggled as he kissed her lips softly. “Later…”  
  
_ Bess cleared her throat. “So not such a bad experience for you.”

“No. I was away from my Father and his constant restrictions and demands, I was able to get one with people, people who didn’t know I was an Adair, who just saw me as the girl with a knack of figuring out how to make their lives better, and well... Rico was my first …love.” First everything. A passionate memory was playing out behind them. The heat and emotion of youth brought a flush of remembrance. She exhaled a little.

“I was accepted there, not set apart Bess. I learned things from people. There was a supervisor there who taught me one of the most valuable things I ever learned about designing. Assume you will be using it when drunk. If you can use it when drunk, it’ll survive.” Devon smiled at that. “Probably because people act like they are drunk when they are panicked in an emergency.”

“I couldn’t wait to get away,” Bess admitted. “To me the Stations were a paradise.”

“We’re not that different,” Devon replied, remembering that heady aching feeling of yearning and freedom. “We just started at different points, from different directions. You knew what your dream was…”

“And so did you. “ Bess agreed. “What happened to Rico?”  
  
“We stayed in touch, once he got over being lied to about who I was.” Devon said. “He wouldn’t allow me to buy him out. Said he was working out himself or not at all, but that didn’t stop me getting him put in the running for jobs stationside. He got one, moved up there on one of my first projects with his wife and daughter Lucille.”  
  
Bess seemed more astonished about that than anything else. “You stayed in touch with him and his family?”

“I take care of my friends Bess,” Devon said. “Those who are my real friends. They were all I had especially after my mother died.”

 Bess reached out to place a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of understanding, but her hand went translucent even as it went bright again. Alonzo faded into view, the energy of that recollection flowing in through vine like tangles all around him.  
  
“Alonzo?” He looked strained, she could see that now. She had no idea how long it had been since she had been dreaming together, only that she had remembered large portions of her life to date.  
  
“Keep going. Don’t hold back, whatever you do, don’t hold back. It’s working Devon.” He encouraged her urgently and once again he faded out.

* * *

Morgan wanted everyone to know he was doing this for the good of them all. Normally the thought of sitting holding another guys hand when he was in a coma was definitely not something he would ever think of doing. But, coming so close to death only a bare couple of days ago, was more than enough push him past that barrier. Besides, virtually everyone else in the camp had done it in the couple of days Alonzo had been unconscious except for Danziger. It wasn’t often that he got to volunteer to do something before the other man and  show his own mettle.

Bess had come back saying how Devon wasn’t how she thought, what amazing insights she now had into the other woman’s past and if there was one thing he had his own genius at, it was information. His job, his career involved sifting and finding patterns in information and code. Not so helpful on a planet unless you counted the geo-lock decryption but it had seen him climb to ladder to a level 4 official at a pretty young age.

He just kept telling himself it was that his skillset hadn’t had chance to shine yet. He might be lower level in the government structure, but he was a Citizen, he rated courtesy, he had power in his own way. So finding out information about  Devon Adair, well that really was a chance he could not pass up even if it meant holding Alonzo’s hand.

“So I just… hold his hand?” he asked Julia. “And start dreaming?”

“The elevated level  his consciousness is functioning  at has created a zone around his body that is able to mimic what happens with a Terrian,” Julia said. “And we know that humans can use that field – the Elder and his group did to communicate with the dreamplane.”

“It is safe isn’t it? I mean…I’m not going to get the same problem?” A perfectly valid concern as far as he was concerned.

“None of the others had any problems.” Julia said. “Are you going in or not Morgan?”

“Fine, fine I’ll do it.” Before he could lose his nerve, he took  hold of Alonzo’s hand and slipped into the dream plane.

* * *

Of all people to join her here, Devon felt her heart drop seeing Morgan turn up. But she was not one to reject any help, no matter the source. She was seeing the pattern of the memories she recalled when people entered seemed to have some overlapping commonality with the person who she was dreaming with at the time. She had absolutely no idea what sort of common ground she might have with Morgan, however - she counted herself grateful t be very different from the man.

“Hello Morgan,” she said bringing up a smile out of habit.

 “Devon! Well…you’re looking better that you do in real life,” he said almost nervously. “Which isn’t hard because you look…well..” he started petering out  but seemed unable stop himself from saying. “..dead.”

“Thank you for that Morgan,” Devon said dryly.

“So we just wait do we?” he asked looking around. “It all looking a bit plain.”

“It comes in its own time.” As she suspected , no common ground at all.

She was as surprised as Morgan apparently was when the image of a Galaxy Level stateroom came up, and she was standing next to Broderick O’Neill waiting for an appointment with the Council. She remembered this.

_“Devon, perhaps you should let me talk with them,” O'Neill said and she shook her head._

_“I have been dealing with high level bureaucrats all my life, and I know how to handle them,” she said firmly._

_“Ms Adair, Commander O’Neill, the Government hearing will  consider your petition,” a minor functionary announced._

“Wow, an actual direct Level 6 hearing.” Morgan seemed rapt, watching carefully. “They were rarely physically convened.”

“We saw them many times,” Devon said. “We were proposing to establish a colony and there were technicalities.When you vow to go to the ends of the Universe to save your son it turns out there are a lot of permits and red tape.”

_The sumptuous nature of the chambers was opulent even by billionaire standards - polished rare woods from Earth where the last few existing trees were highly protected, space grown crystal decanters, inlay of the council table in semi-precious gems. It was all designed to awe and cow people but it didn’t work on Devon Adair._

_“Ah Ms Adair.  Have a seat.” The government representative had a studied, faintly regretful expression on his face. “We have been considering your request for the… let me see, Eden Project, and I’m afraid to say it is impossible…”_

_“..because it is hypothetical?” Devon interrupted. “I’m glad to inform you that this is no longer the case.”_

_“This is highly irregular Ms Adair.” The Government representative shook his head_

“Great you pissed him off,” Morgan said shaking his head. “You have to play it softly with these people otherwise you don’t get anywhere.”

“Saying yes, yes and backing down all the time does not get things  moving.” She replied. “I had to be forceful. “

_“I do apologize for being unable to be able to pass on the information any earlier, but it is my pleasure to inform you that Adair Enterprises has acquired the sector rights to sector G. The contracts were only signed this morning,” the younger Devon said sweetly. “And as you know, these deals can be unstable until signed off. “_

_There was a deathly silence that met this pronouncement. Most of the members there looked like they had sucked on a lemon._

“I can’t believe you just did that to a Level 6 official,” Morgan seemed to be beside himself with a combination of anxiety and excitement.

“If I could stand up to my Father, standing up to them was a piece of cake,” Devon  said. It was strange to think of the level of awe and quite often undeserved respect a lot of people gave without questioning to the government officials.

_“We have not ratified this acquisition. There is nothing about colonization in those contracts, “the chair of the hearing said._

_“I believe you will find the contract drawn up by our legal people, and signed off by your Interstellar development departments, do in fact stipulate the following clause; “..the disposal of any and all land masses are at the discretion of the signatories of Adair Enterprises.” Devon paused. “Legally, gentlemen, this meeting is a technicality. You cannot prevent me going to G882.”_  
  
_“But we can refuse to release other Citizens and those in Indentured Service to join the Eden Project,” one of them sharply._

_This time Devon’s approach changed. “Yes, this is true. And your cooperation and support would be invaluable.”_

_They appeared mollified by this as Devon continued._

_“Gentlemen, I am not just a mother who is willing to move heaven and earth to find a chance of life for her son, I am also a business woman. As such, I understand the processes of negotiation.  I have here, prototype designs for a colony based  transporter spaceship that I will sign over to the Government.” Devon said calling up a portable holographic representation. “With minimal adaption, it can be changed into a variety of uses – military transport, construction crew portable base. Exploration team base ship…”_

_From the expressions on their faces she had judge their political needs very astutely, and managed to keep her triumphant smile inside._

“And they thought I was going to appeal to their humanitarian side about the one last hope of Syndrome children,” Devon said shaking her head. "They weren't ready for trading favors."

“I have to admit, I thought you had persuaded them with a sob story,” Morgan admitted. “But that, that was breath taking negotiation. You got them off balance from the get go, took out the power base of their argument, and then turned it around gave them back just the power you were willing to let them have before sweetening the pot.” It was the first time she had ever seen him so enthusiastic.  “I thought you had teams of people to do that for you.”

“We had people who did a lot of negotiation but I wasn’t going to let them be over ridden not this time,” Devon commented.  
  
“When you wake up, I’d love to know more,” Morgan said and she found herself agreeing mainly because she was surprised that someone was genuinely thinking that she would wake up as much as anything, even as Morgan faded from view and a another batch of memory found its way into the connection.

It seemed like only moments to her when another familiar voice reached her in the darkness. “Devon?”

“Yale!” she turned immediately and embraced him with desperate relief.  
  
“How are you Devon? “ Yale said  in his gentle concerned voice. “We have been very worried about you.”  
  
“Is Uly all right?” If there had been a substitute father figure in her son’s life, it was Yale. He had been with her through her awkward adolescences and all the disasters in her life, and who else would she have trusted with Uly?  
“Alonzo told us he was fine with the Terrians,” Yale said. “Now what can I do to help?”  
  
“I am reliving memories,” Devon murmured looking around and her heart sank. “Oh no. No, I don’t want to relive this.”

But Alonzo had said don’t hold back. Practically begged her not to.

“Of all the memories.” Yale said, and she could see the moisture trembling in his eyes as he recognized the moment as well. “Oh Devon, I’m so sorry.”  
  
_At a desk in her own small office, luxurious but not decadent, a slightly more mature 18 year old Devon was working hard using a holographic modeller on several area’s at one of a new station design._

_It had gone on to win her awards, and become the default design for a new more efficient next generation of station construction as the Food Crisis of the next few years forced even more evacuation from Earth.  
  
A younger looking Yale, less touched with grey in his hair and clean shaven entered the room, his movements heavy and his expression somber. “Devon?”  
  
“Hold on Yale, I’ll just save this a moment,” she replied auto saving her work and looking up and smiling. Her expression slipped, the smile wavering as she saw Yale’s expression.  
  
“Yale? What’s wrong? What is it?” there was fear in her voice._

_  
“Devon, I’m so, so sorry…there’s..there’s been an accident..”_

_The sorrow in his voice made the both of them reach for each others hands even as  the younger Devon shook her head. “Not my mother, please Yale. Not her. Anyone but her… please..”_

She meant ‘let it be my father, not her.’ It was a secret shame not laid bare because it could not have been more obvious.

_“I’m so sorry… So sorry. The transport she was on…” he said stepping forward. “It was struck. There were no survivors. A freak accident.”  
  
Devon remembered that moment afresh, wanting to scream and nothing coming out because her throat had tightened with shock and emotion. Her legs losing strength, her skin burning with cold as her body reacted with shock.  Her mother, the only one that supported her, brave, courageous, a genius in her own right. Who had to leave to oversee projects, but who came back and wanted to know what she had been doing, creating, and was everything she wanted to be. There was the Ark, their own private collaborative effort. A colony spaceship, self sufficient, capable of travelling space and supporting a thriving community of people. Their dream, the thing they were going to do as a mother and daughter collaboration as equals._

 Yale was holding her up a mirror of his action back then as the tears flowed again from the both of them.

She had done everything she could to follow the legacy of her mother. To be successful, to be brilliant, to be determined.  To have a core of steel in the proverbial velvet glove. To listen, but to make things happen and where her mother created life in the stars, she had gone on to the next step. To create life on new planets, to be there for her son no matter what.

But she’d never forget that moment when Yale broke the news.

_It was like she was the one that died in that moment and a different Devon was the one who emerged from the weeping wreck of her previous life. She had heard it said, but never understood what it meant to have lived a lifetime in one night, but that first night filled with uncontrollable tears and a symbol of her shattered life it seemed that she lived six months in that night trying to get her head around the massive aching void that was her mother’s absence. The Devon who got up the following morning, she looked different, she had lost the last of her girlishness and adopted the core of steel that had marked her change in circumstances. Never again would her father bully her. Her mother’s shares had passed to her, and the board soon learned for all her youth she was not to be trifled with. She also made it very obvious where the real talent in the family found its source, following Yale’s advice to play the games of that Council on her terms._

_It was different this time watching it all unravel as it had before. Yale had been with her then, was with her now. She had needed to learn fast how to be a match for the predators at the top of the political food chain.  She made her name and he had advised her all the way, for all the sly comments she received about keeping on her Yale Teacher instead of having him decommissioned. Decommissioned, a fancy sanitized word for executed. She couldn’t do that to Yale.  The first two years were hard. She had thrown herself into her work, all but abandoned by her Father who had taken a cryo-sleep jump on some obscure political negotiation of the Council.  
By the time he had come back, she had established herself in the Government Levels maneuvering as a power in her own right. They needed Stations, she was the best designer on the market. Even at aged 21, she was still the best there was and they knew it. _

“Oh Devon, I’m sorry you had to go through that again,” Yale murmured. “I really am.”

She wiped her eyes and gave a thin smile. “Apparently it is helping. I wanted nothing more but to forget that moment”

“It may not seem like it Devon, but it will help you,” Yale said. “When the…morganite helped me break the memory block conditioning and I recalled my past, it was only then I felt whole, like a fully functioning person. The tragedy was that up until that point I had not realized what was missing.”  
  
“I know, it’s just… I still miss her.”

“She was a person worth missing Devon,” Yale said. “She never stopped asking for you to be allowed to join her on her projects but your father objected on the grounds of you being his sole progeny and not being allowed in a dangerous environment for fear of Heir endangerment.”

Devon felt the emotion rise up. “She wanted me with her? I knew she had to go and that I could not stay with her but I didn’t realize that she *wanted* me there.”  
  
“Yes Devon. She would say that to you every time she had to leave. ‘I wish I could take you with me.’” Yale promised her, sincerity in every word. “She had the most…impressive arguments with your father about it. I’m afraid love did not come into their liaison a great deal. “  
  
“I thought it was just words.” Just empty pleasantries. When she had been taking Uly with her everywhere, she had secretly questioned if the love and connection she had remembered had been real. She had found a way, why could her mother not have done the same? The fact that her father might have blocked it had not entered her mind – particularly as he seemed to pretty much ignore her most of the time. Why would he even want her around?  
The cynical, older part of herself now recognize that she was an irresistible bait for many of the scions of the other powerful Families. A marriage contract, even a 2 year would have reaped massive benefits. Again, nothing but a piece for him to move around in his powerplaying.

“You remember what your mother said about words? Find a man who is true to his word, and you will find one true in his heart.’ Yale reminded her gently.

She nodded smiling a little. It was one of the reasons she had approved the hire of John for all of his reputation of not suffering fools gladly. She didn’t need flattery from a drone trying to social climb, she needed to know if something worked or was broken. Likewise she didn’t want empty promises if something needed fixing, she wanted cold hard truth. Danziger definitely had that reputation and had not disappointed her in that respect.

“I remember Yale. Like I remember you helping me through all of that time. Establishing myself, dealing with things, working the system and not being dragged in by the Council like my father was.”

The images of her younger self had fast forwarded some of those times, empty of emotional support save her once time tutor and friend.

“Credit to you Devon. Most would have failed, but you did not. You were stronger than all of them.” Yale murmured and they were the sort of words she had craved from her real Father in her youth. She realized that her Father’s ‘running away’ as she had called it at the time in cryo sleep had been a gift of sorts.  He smiled at her.

“You will beat this Devon, as you have overcome every other obstacle in your life. I have faith in you.” Yale said as the light around them began to grow again and Alonzo faded in. He looked worse than before, like a man on the edge of exhaustion.

“Alonzo?”

“I can’t hold on much longer,” he gasped out. “Yale, send John. It’s got to be him.”  
  
Devon flinched a little at the thought Danziger might see her memories. That was one thing she had been dreading, but Alonzo looked really ill even here in the dream state.

“Alonzo, I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt you…”

“Doesn’t matter it has to be John… Last chance”

He faded again and Devon was left alone in the dark.

 

* * *

“He definitely said John had to go in?” Julia asked, concern making her brusque.

“Yes,” Yale said. “And I know he had been avoiding the possibility. But Julia… Alonzo did not look as if he could carry on much longer.”

“That’s because he cannot,” she answered. She shook her head. The readings from her dia-glove were very worrying. Three days Alonzo had been locked into the dream zone, and just as the mind and body was not designed to not dream, nor was it designed to dream at the accelerated level he had been doing, let along anything else that was happening. His body temperature had been steadily rising into a dangerous territories, his brainwaves had been going crazy and she felt helpless to stop it.  “This is killing him.  If his temperature rises any more he is likely to go into febrile convulsions.”

She could only assume if the process wasn’t completed, that would be disastrous for all of them involved. Uly, Alonzo and Devon.

“Then the sooner we get John to agree, the better.”  Yale said. “I believe he won’t listen to me.”

“He’ll listen to me,” she said getting up, determined to get this sorted out and done as quickly as possible. She had to trust that whatever they were doing was helping Devon because it was difficult to make sense of the readings.  Something was happening that much was obvious, but good or bad she wasn’t completely sure.

* * *

Fixing the Transrover was something John did to soothe his nerves. He tried not to show anything but he was uncomfortable seeing Devon in the cryo tube even if he didn’t actually come out and say it. It looked too much like seeing her dead and …he couldn’t face that either. He prided himself on being practical in a crisis, keeping a level head and taking action, but being helpless was not something he could handle very well. He’d had nightmares after being possessed by the ancient Terrian ‘demon’ privately terrified of the sheer power of the dream plane and his vulnerability to its effect. His attitude toward Alonzo had shifted after that. They didn’t have to discuss it but he knew for all the pilot made light of it, the way  he was more sensitive to that energy than any of the others made him feel exposed and only now was he starting to learn how to use it. John did definitely not envy him that in the slightest.

“Danziger? Danziger.”  
Julia. Perhaps there had been a change. It was a curious mixture of anxiety and hope that made him react.

“Yeah?” John stood up from where he had the hood popped. “Any news?”

“Yale’s just dropped out the dreamscape,” Julia told him urgently. “Alonzo said he needs you to go in.”

“Yeah, well, he can keep on asking,” John said wiping his hands of grease. “I’m not going mucking around in Devon’s head. “  He set his expression, into one of no compromise. He would do Devon no good he knew it.

 “Danziger… John, this is serious. I think Alonzo is coming to the end of his strength. His vitals are deteriorating,” she said.  “If he fails now, we’ll lose the both of them. If he thinks you can help…”

“My last experience with the dreamplane was a disaster, “ John replied and grimaced. “Alonzo doesn’t need my back up. He managed to kick the ass of that demon without my help.”

“It’s Devon you’ll be helping,” Julia said. “The others said Devon recalls memories of her own life that she associates or  has a connection with them. If Alonzo thinks you might be the vital ingredient…”  
Fine. What could he say to that? No, I’m too scared, when his daughter had taken the plunge.  “Fine.”

She seemed surprised but led him back to the lab which he had managed to avoid for a couple of days. Grimacing, he saw that Julia had been understating the situation if anything. “So, I just touch Alonzo’s hand right?”  
  
Julia nodded. “Hopefully this will do it.”

Danziger nodded and touched the comatose pilots hand falling immediately into the dreamplane.

~*~

“Devon?” He whirled around and there she was, as healthy and vibrant as he remembered. It was an immense relief, just seeing her like that.

“John!” Her face lit up with a smile and he found himself smiling back despite his reservations. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Well,” he couldn’t lie. “I didn’t think there was anything I could do that would help. I concentrated on the camp – keeping that going.” He knew that she would appreciate that and from her brisk nod of the head, he was right. They instinctively had the same priorities.

“Someone’s got to keep things going,” she agreed and they smiled again, the darkness forgotten around them.

“So. How does this work?” John asked looking around at the nothingness. “Memories right?”  
  
“Yes. “She said nodding. “They tend to rise up when someone comes in here. “

“Do you know why Alonzo said it had to be me?” he asked.

“I got the impression he only had strength for one more connection and wanted to make it a good one.” Devon said. “They seem to react to people’s curiosity about my life somehow. Although something usually has come up by now.”  
  
“Perhaps I’m not curious,” John said looking at the blankness.

“Perhaps you think you know all about me already,” Devon said. “That appears to have been the trend so far. Everyone believing that I grew up in some perfect idyllic existence, no troubles, no obstacles.”  
  
It was true enough, he wasn’t going to deny that had been his first impression.  It was no secret he had thought that. “You’ve got to admit, you look the part of the Family socialite.”  
“It wasn’t handed to me on a plate Danziger,” she sounded like she was bristling a little.

“Look, I get that it was tough, but so was raising True alone,” he said. “Being Indentured on the hereditary line is like being forced to work because someone you never knew made a decision that condemns you.”  
  
“I never said I agreed with that system,” Devon replied folding her arms defensively. “You’d pay out now if you went back.”

They both knew the odds of that happening was remote but neither said anything.

“Damn straight.” John answered.  Something was starting to coalesce around them and his curiosity piqued as Alonzo shimmered into view.

“Danziger, I swear I’m going to…” He grimaced as if in pain. “And you Devon…I haven’t got time to wait and you two are so goddamn repressed.”

“What?” John said in alarm.  
  
“Just think about what you send all that energy not thinking about okay? I do remember you punching me in the face after that spider bite. Both of you…hurry...” he faded out again.

“You punched him in the face?” Devon said staring at him. “When he was under the influence of the spider venom?”  
  
“Er. Maybe a little?” John admitted.

_Around them a memory shimmered into being, a small Spartan room on Earth of the type John recognized from a brief secondment with his father when he was in his teens. They were mass produced. What the hell was Devon doing in one of those? She looked young in the memory, maybe around 16 or so and nothing like the wealthy heiress he knew her to be. The young man with her had a dark handsome look that reminded him a little of Alonzo’s looks and his jealousy sparked again. He knew it. That had to be Devon’s type. Not that he cared.  
  
“Rico, please..” Devon was saying._

_“You lied to us. To me.” The guy looked furious, betrayed. “I trusted you Dev… is it even your name?”  
  
“Devon,” she said a bit numbly. “And it wasn’t me.”_

_“So what was this ? A  game? Slumming it for fun? Slipping back to your quarters to gorge on fresh foods rather than phyto-rations?” Rico was livid._

_“No. It was a punishment from my father...”_

John could see the exact instant that Devon realized she had made a massive error.

_She drained of color._

_“So. My *life*, my existence is your punishment,” Rico hissed. “Your hell… do you know how insulting that is?”_

_“Rico, that was my fathers opinion, not mine!” Devon said. “I didn’t want to lie to you.”  
  
“Someone forced you to lie did they?”  
  
“No, I just …how could I explain? “ she said. “I have been here six month Rico, this isn’t a punishment to me. It is one of the best experiences of my life!”_

_“And what was I ..Citizen? Another experience, another punishment?” Rico flared back at her._

_“No! No Rico, I love you…look, I can arrange for you to come up to the stations.”_

John winced at that.

Devon shook her head. “In my defense John, I was very young. And in love.”

_“If I make it to the stations it will because of what I have done, not because of sleeping with someone, “ Rico said, going to the door._

_“Rico please…”_

_“Goodbye Adair.” And the metal door slammed in her face._

Devon shook her head. “I haven’t had a great track record with relationships,” she said ruefully as John took in the expression on her counterparts face. He knew the look of someone in love; Devon had been genuinely in love with that guy. He’d missed out there, walked away because he felt he’d been made a fool.

“What about Uly’s father?” He asked. True had said that Uly never remembered his dad, only that he was another member of the Families.  
  
The images shimmered again, another memory. _A holo-gear transmission of an older man with piercing blue eyes._

_“…it is simple Devon, you enter into a three year contract with Leon Kostovich, and Adair Enterprises get a spousal tax break on the use of their shipping lines.”_

_“Father, if I wanted a political marriage I would have arranged my own,” an older Devon said frowning._

_“Your Nexus station in the asteroid belt is behind schedule. You will never be able to complete and defaulting will cost you the Centauri contracts. “ he cajoled. “Besides, might I remind you of the requirement if you are young and fertile to donate your eggs or have a child by the time you are twenty five?”_

_The Optimum fertility law.  He had ended up with True due to that law that the International Council had brought in. There were conspiracy theories about it of course. Birth rates had been restricted, but now they were compelled at a specific time to minimize mutations and defects that seemed to be more common on the stations._

_“Father, I’ve told you before, you are not selling my eggs to the highest bidder,” she said firmly as if they had this argument repeatedly._

_“I am still head of the Family!”  
  
“And legally you have no say, I do.” Devon paced for a moment. “I will meet this Leon, but I make no promises.”  
  
“You will see I am right,” he said confidently before signing off._

“Uly’s dad was from a political marriage?” John asked. He had at least had his contract for love. Charis had been a choice, a wonderful choice and all too brief when she was killed on the job, in a rust bucket station trying to fix a malfunctioning vent. If not for True needing him, he probably would have never made it through losing her.

“Yes, but not Leon Kostova. He was a complete idiot,” Devon replied shaking her head. “Even though I didn’t want any man my father picked, I realized he was right. No, Uly’s father was Edward Grant.”  
  
“Grant of Grant PharmCorp?” Danziger asked boggling at that thought. They practically ran all pharmaceutical production and were the archetypal billionaires. It really was another world.

“Mm. My father was wrong. I had another project on the boil – that of MedWay, and its mobile mini-station Hospitals,” Devon said. “I wanted that one to succeed. Edward was pleasant, intelligent and we had a mutual interest. But when Uly was born…”  
  
_A coiffured young man looked anxious. “What did he say?”  
  
“Ulysses…” She looked like her heart was breaking. “He has the Syndrome Edward. It’s confirmed.” He heart looked like it was breaking and John couldn’t understand why the other man did not just naturally reach to comfort her.  _

_“I see.” It was like he had closed off. “Then we will leave him in care of course.”  
  
“Leave him in care? Are you suggesting we abandon OUR son?” Devon was outraged. “That is not an option. “_

_“Can you imagine what will happen to PharmCorp if it gets out I have a less than perfect son?” Edward replied. “I could wreck our share price, take billions off of the value.”_

_“Uly is your son!” Devon said forcefully. “Your SON Edward. What is more important than that?”_

John could see the love for her son burning inside of her, the way her priorities had shifted and turned. That he recognized, that feeling of how his world had been turned on its head when True had been born.  The center of his universe had been firmly moved into the tiny frame of his daughter and he would have done anything for her. Anything to set her free of Indentured Service, anything to secure her a healthy happy future.

_But the man in front of him didn’t share that feeling and proffered a data crystal. “A severance. I’ve signed it; you’ll get the payout clause of course and the negotiated contracts between our companies still stand, but in return, there is no mention that I am his father. His birth records will be amended to Ulysses Adair, rather than Grant-Adair and I will be redacted as father.”_

_“Fine. I will find a cure for MY son, I am not giving up on him,” Devon said with cold anger. “You will have your silence in exchange for a pro-bono Grant PharmCorp sponsorship of the abandoned Syndrome children at  MedWay. “_

_“Devon be reasonable..”_

_“Reasonable? Edward, don’t pretend that you can’t spin that into some sort of political gold, “ Devon said folder her arms. “Those are my terms. “_

John recognised that look. It was a steely glare that held no compromise. Devon, when she was sure she was doing the right thing was immovable. He smiled a little at that, even as one of the most powerful men in the known interstellar community was browbeaten into voice printing his agreement to those terms.  
  
“Okay, that was pretty impressive. I heard about the PharmCorp sponsorship of the Syndrome children.” John commented.

“Edward played it well,” Devon said. “And so ended my marriage contract, not with a bang or even a whimper but with a cloak of secrecy.”

“So you never loved him?” John tried to ask casually.

“No. Not really. Love was.., complicated in my position.” Devon said looking at him. “I can’t help but notice that the memories that come up when you are around are those to do with people I’ve dated.”  
  
“Well, we don’t know much about your past, I guess I’m curious,” John said. Jealous as well, seeing the competition and measuring himself up against it if he was being truthful. “I mean, you know, everyone has stories about who they love don’t they?”  
  
“I don’t really know whether I have ever really been in love,” she said and he felt unaccountably empty. But around them, images started to flicker belying her words with reality.

_Images of him, working as she checked progress on the colony ship. Of him digging like crazy to find Uly sucked into the Earth. Of them both tangled together in vines. Of her worried when he was hurt, of simple moments around the camps where she watched him doing something innocuous and just smiled._

He genuinely couldn’t remember feeling more shocked and stunned.

  
“Devon? Your memories of love include me. Here?” He thought this would be some sort of purgatory for her. Hardship, and roughing it which he had admired her for dealing with without complaining, but never in a million years did he think some of it would form some of Devon’s best and most powerful memories.

 “I..” Devon looked mortified. “You’ve always been so…prickly about our differences John. I respect that, but any gesture I make you have interpreted  as patronizing.”

“Well, I…” It was true, it had been like that. Devon’s memories flickered around them again, gaining momentum and speed.  He had rebuffed her, taking the worst possible look at her actions even unintended.  “You being interested in me? A drone from the lower levels of the Stations? Not exactly your type Devon.”

“John…” Devon said gently. “The first person I fell in love with could have been _you_ , you idiot.”

He thought back to the first scene he had witnessed, and a young man throwing away something precious because of pride.  Was that what he was doing?  
  
“It’s not like it matters here does it? Just because I’m Devon Adair, that means nothing here. I lead because I feel responsible for bringing everyone here, and responsible for getting everyone to a place where they can make a choice to stay or go. Not because I think I’m better than anyone else.”  
“Yeah, I can see that.” He had a choice himself. Pretend this wasn’t happening or acknowledged he got jealous, that he sought out arguments with her because it made him feel alive. Would he forgive himself if this didn’t work and Devon didn’t make it and he hadn’t done something?

He turned around to face her, even as the myriad of images of interactions of the two of them continued to stream past feeding into the connection to the other dreamplane.

“Devon, I…” Dammit, he wasn’t good with words. He was practical, direct, a man of action. Taking a chance, he leaned in towards her, arms slipping around her. No feeling of pulling away, no hesitancy…  
  
“We could die of old age John,” Devon said with a faint sound of amusement in her voice as she reached up to him and pulled him down to a kiss that was so intense it couldn’t possibly be real.  That didn’t stop him enjoying every moment of it.

Light flared around them both, the brightness never fading, not this time even as they continued on oblivious.

* * *

Finally. Alonzo took the final stream of memories, exhausted and shaken and barely able to manipulate the energies any more. With one last effort he tried to call up the strength of the dreamplane. Vicariously experiencing a life was exhausting enough, but grafting it together had taxed him to the extreme. For some reason, the key ingredient was the capacity for love, he wasn’t sure why except for the fact that if he was integrating something alien into his emotional space he would probably want it to be capable of that at the very least.

“Uly..” his voice was cracked and weak and he couldn’t help the slight resentment that if Devon and Danziger had been a little less repressed he wouldn’t feel quite so crap. “Now! “  
  
Rooted in the Terrian dreamplane, the young boy pulled the energies Alonzo had laboriously woven together and the metphysical construct of the floating island and the dreamplane collided with an impact he knew would have jolted Devon and Danziger to consciousness. Instantly and under Uly’s trilling instructions, the link thickened, and spouted, stitching the  area’s together and releasing him into a panting and completely exhausted heap. Truth was, if he’d known what would be involved he would have been less blasé about leaping in feet first.

“Alonzo? Did we do it?” Uly asked him, sounding worried.  
  
“Yeah kid, we did..” Alonzo exhaled, lying on the white sands. Everything hurt. He remembered everything, a whole other life bleeding into his awareness. Terrian’s struggled with the concept of privacy and he could understand why. To them experiences were to be blended and shared like breathing. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet, if ever. They would not get a good reaction if they said they had witnessed everything.

“Uly, when we go back, just…say we were busy doing energy stuff.” Alonzo advised.

“But Mom and Mr Danziger…” Uly sounded excited and pleased by that, and Alonzo smiled but continued.

“Will both be really embarrassed if they think we remember what happened and might stop.  If we leave them to it, they’ll sneak around for a bit, but eventually they’ll slip up in public,” Alonzo said conspiratorially. His head was killing him.

  
“Okay. Tell them I’ll be back soon. The Terrians will bring me,” Uly said agreeing easily.

Alonzo nodded and willed the dreamplane to finally let him go.

Waking up was a mistake. He hurt everywhere. Even his hair seemed to hurt, his muscles, his head, his eyes. He felt like he battled through a really bad virus or something, and he was incredibly thirsty, even though he appeared to have a drip in his arm.

No one was near him and the reason became apparent because he could hear a commotion going on nearby.

“..don’t understand how it is possible,” Julia was saying. “Organ function has returned to normal, and you might feel a bit weak Devon, but...it’s all gone. The organ damage, everything!”

“That’s great news,” Danziger was saying. “Let me help you up.”  
  
“That means Alonzo and Uly did it,” he heard Devon say. “Are they okay?”  
  
Time for a conveniently oblivious return. He groaned a little, which actually took very little acting, as he was stiff and sore.  
“Alonzo? “ And there was Julia, and he smiled faintly, squinting in the too bright light and actively complaining at the light in his eyes.

“Ow. Did it work?” he asked , his voice harsh with lack of use.

“Yes! It’s practically a miracle. Devon is practically completely recovered,” she said. “And you, from these readings are…weak, dehydrated and appear to have the mother of all migraines.”  
  
He made the mistake of trying to sit up and regretted it immediately. “Ow,ow,ow..”  
  
“Don’t be stupid, just lie down. I’ll get you water and pain relief. It will pass off.”  
  
“Uly is on his way back,” he said seeing Devon hove into view as well. She really did look like she’d had a miracle cure.

“Thank you Alonzo, I’m not sure how you did it but thank you.”

He affected a puzzled expression. “I’m not sure either – it’s like it’s fading in my mind,” he said and caught the expression of relief on both Devon and Danziger’s faces.

He could remember all of it but he was not admitting it, no one would ever trust him if they thought he held all their secrets in his head.  And if he was right, he might have to do this again, not right now, just sometime but at least he knew where to start with them rather than having to go the long way around. Better they thought it was forgotten.

“Well, it worked a treat,” Devon said, patting his hand.

“Good work man. Get a bit of rest Lonz, you look like shit,” Danziger said. “Come on Dev.. Adair, let go and see if we can find Uly huh?”

As the pair of them left and Julia busied herself on the other side of the lab, Alonzo relaxed back into the pillows please that he would be able to help Julia if this started happening to her, and that he might have been instrumental in initiating the inevitable romance that was trying to blossom secretly out of sight of the group. Yeah, like everyone wouldn’t know in practically seconds.

 “Go get ‘er Danziger,” he muttered to himself and smiled as he closed his eyes into a blessedly dreamless sleep.


End file.
